


I Called Your Name ('til the fever broke)

by fightingthecage



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Background Character Death, Implied Violence, M/M, Self-Destruction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-10
Updated: 2014-10-10
Packaged: 2018-02-20 13:52:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2431211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fightingthecage/pseuds/fightingthecage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Valjean died. Javert is not dealing well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Called Your Name ('til the fever broke)

**Author's Note:**

> I found the start of this on my hard drive, and couldn't even remember when I'd written it. And as I'm procrastinating on other stuff, I added some more this afternoon and et voila.

 

 

 _Promise me_ , he had said. That man who never asked for anything in his life. _Promise me you will never try it again._

And he, who could no longer deny him anything, who – if he could - would give him the world on a plate made of his wooden heart – had agreed.

He is a fool. He is a damn, damned, fool.

 

*

 

The days after Valjean slipped away remain a blur. He hopes that every day for the rest of his miserable life remains so; he cannot stand this pain, he cannot bear this loss. And he is ashamed of his anger, because Valjean does not deserve it. Valjean deserves every good thing life owes him, and instead he is given his daughter’s tears, and a vengeful man’s fury. Fury he has no one to vent at, because in this last year there has been no one but Valjean, that _fool_ , who became everything and then curled himself up in a corner and allowed himself to wilt away. Why? _Why?_ Everything was there for him, and he could not reach out a single finger to take it.

Javert has taken to drinking, and does not care what it says about his character. He no longer has work to do, because his letter to the Prefecture made sure of it, on that night when he fully intended to hand in his resignation to God. The morning came, and he had handed it to Valjean instead. He was so stupid. This is what having a heart is; it is agony, it is a ball of lead in his chest that he wishes would fail under the pressure of his anger. Please, God. Make it fail. He cannot force it to himself because he made a foolish promise, and now he has no choice but to endure. His leaden heart beats on. He hates it. He hates everything. He hates Valjean.

 

*

 

He is drunk the night a man approaches his corner of the tavern, and sits without invitation. ‘You’re Inspector Javert,’ he says, flashing brown, broken teeth.

‘Just Javert,’ he slurs back, and does not stop the man pouring him another glass of wine.

‘You arrested my sister’s husband. This drink’s on me.’

Javert does not care. He drinks the wine. The man pours another and starts to talk; the only thing that registers is some gratitude directed at him, because the thief he arrested also liked to use his fists on his wife, and then later, that the man speaking has broad shoulders, and brown hair, and there is no anger in his eyes.

When he is being fucked on some bed, somewhere, at some point even later, he asks himself why he had believed Valjean when he said he was going away for a short time. Where would he have been going?

When the man is finished, Javert throws up over the side of the bed. When he is alone, and finally dressed, he reads the word ‘sick’ written on the wall near the mattress. _Yes_ , he thinks. _You and I both._

 

*

 

Valjean’s daughter insists on visiting. There is shock on her face today, and he sees her look around at the disorder there never used to be; wine bottles on the table, untidy sheets on show past the open bedroom door, crumbs on a plate. _I am glad to see you, Inspector,_ she says,  and Javert wonders if Valjean meant to teach her to lie, or if she picked it up on her own.

The next time, it is her husband who comes. _My wife is worried_ , says the boy, and Javert’s laughter is only in his head but still drowns out every other sound in the room.

 

*

 

He does not go looking for men with broad shoulders. He does not go looking for men at all. He hates men, all men, including himself, including Valjean. Especially Valjean. But they find him anyway, and when it happens he wonders why and does not let the curiousity stop it happening. He is on his hands and knees tonight, taking only enough care to stop his head being thrust into the wall, counting the _thump thump thump_ of the bed chipping the paintwork instead. There is blood collecting along the line of his top lip, a slow fall from his nose, and he waits, and waits, for there to be enough, for it to drop, for the taste of copper to slip between his lips and spread over his tongue. The man had not wanted to be kind, and Javert wanted him to be cruel, and all he has to show for it is an aching nose and an arsehole that will sting in the morning. His cock bangs loosely on his leg. His shoulders ache from the bother of keeping himself up, until the man knocks his elbow to break his stance, pushes his face into the pillow and holds it there while he does what he is doing. Javert cannot breathe, and is happier than he has been in months.

‘Fuck the police,’ the man says later, and spits on him as he pulls out, and stands up, and disappears like a ghost in the mist. Javert does not believe in ghosts. He hates the man for loosening his hold too soon. He traces the word ‘life’ written on the wall, his finger loose and weak, enjoying the taste of his blood.

 

*

 

 _You see, she feels responsible_.

Javert feels responsible. Javert _is_ responsible. If he had not believed Valjean, and left him alone; if he had noticed that food was going untouched and water undrunk, he would have done something. But Valjean never cared about him in the same way, not when his daughter was everything, not when Javert never _told_ him what he meant. They had not seen each other for months after the Seine, and then they met and talked for two days, and then they somehow ended up meeting every now and again. Meetings that started with tea and ended with Valjean’s hand in his trousers, or him on his knees with Valjean’s cock in his mouth, or him bending over and allowing - wanting, needing…

 _You were his friend_.

He squeezes his eyes shut so he will not remember the heaven of Valjean pressed against his back, and the way it was the only time he ever felt this life was worth something. It works, and he wishes it did not. It does not squeeze out the sound of Pontmercy’s earnest hand-wringing, his nerves, his stupid face. Monsieur le Baron still wants to shit himself at coming near a policeman who saw him at the barricade, even though he stands there dressed in a coat that cost more than everything Javert owns, while Javert is in shirtsleeves, and no boots, and has not brushed his hair in a week. His eyes glue to the coat. Last night’s wine sits heavy in his head. Valjean’s money bought that coat. It is a piece of Valjean. It is here, in his parlour. It is-

He tells the boy to get out. He does. Javert does not feel better.

 

*

 

The rapids are as fast as they were eighteen months ago. He watches them swirl under his dangling feet, and ignores the people looking at him as they walk by. He is talking to himself, not them. He does not care if they hear, because everyone should know what a selfish, awful, man Valjean was; how he saved him, and then would not save himself; how he made him care and then went and died; how all of this, all of it, is his fault. He drops his wine bottle into the water when it is finished, and wonders if it will smash when it hits the surface; he leans forward to see but it is hard, the bottle seems to have vanished so maybe it was not real, or maybe he is not leaning forward enough-

Hands pull him back. He lashes out, catches something that is both soft and hard, and wakes up an hour later in a cell. The word ‘birth’ is written on the wall, and Javert begins to laugh out loud.

 

*

 

Chabouillet thinks he should work as a clerk. Javert tells him he did not ask him for a job. Chabouillet points out that he needs one, and is probably owed one, and good God man, when did he last wash? Javert replies with calm and logical facts: he is only here because the jailer spoke his name in the wrong ear, and he was brought up against his will, and it is not as though they provide baths in police cells. But he will not be held now the only thing wrong with him is a hangover, because he knows the law – knows it more than he would like, and what does Chabouillet think about _that?_ – and that is how it will be. He has apologised for mistakenly striking the guard. It has been acknowledged as an accident. It is over.

Chabouillet looks doubtful. _The only thing wrong with you is a hangover?_  Javert says nothing. They let him go.

 

*

 

‘Come on. I’ll treat you well. What’s your name?’

 _You do not need my name_ , he says. _And if you plan to treat me well, go away_.

Valjean always treated him well. Valjean was love and care personified, though he did not love Javert and made up for it with kindness so strong Javert would kill for it now. His touch was gentle. His eyes were soft, and smiled with warmth, and he would enter him gently so as not to cause pain. He held him down with large and careful hands, and kissed him, and made him love him and if he walked into the room now, Javert would shoot him between the eyes.

A fist cracks its knuckle on his ribs. The owner swears. Javert closes his eyes, and follows the journey of a bead of sweat running in a jagged line between his shoulder blades. It tickles, picking its way between various pains; it skirts a bruise and runs the line of a welt, dripping lower until the broken whip-lashed skin pulls it into its bleeding maw. It stings in protest, and Javert thanks it for that until a belt flicks out, carves itself lovingly into the pulled-taut skin above his hip, and agony blooms and then screams in his ear so that everything else is lost.

Later, on the floor, he rolls onto his back, someone’s come already halfway down his thigh. The word ‘doctor’ stares reproachfully down at him, a fingernail scratch in the dirt, shockingly white against black-stained wood.

 

*

 

_He sleeps. Although his fate was very strange, he lived. He died when he had no longer his angel. The thing came to pass simply, of itself, as the night comes when day is gone._

He wonders who wrote it. He wonders why it did not occur to him to do it. But that is stupid, because he knows nothing of poetry, little of words, and only a glimpse of Valjean himself. He could not even tell the man was dying, or why. He cared for nothing but the way it felt to lie close to him, and if he was aware of the vast gulf between them – a gulf that remained, no matter how hard they pressed together – he did not consider it his place to try and breach it.

He drinks. It must have been Pontmercy, he decides. There are few candidates, and the girl would not write about herself that way, and he is sure he did not do it. Who else is there? He thinks he will ask, but knows he will not. His legs hurt. Everything hurts. He smells bad, and there is blood on his face and in other places his clothes conceal. He thinks he will go back tonight, and see if he can find that man again. But he is not sure what he looks like. It had been very dark.

‘I should never have promised.’ Valjean’s face swirls through his mind. Javert snarls at it, and then is sorry when it goes away. Everything hurts so much, and it took him longer to get here than it should. ‘And you should never have asked me to.’

There is blood, somewhere. The pain screams through his body, an icy blaze that burns inside but prickles the hair on his arms to standing. He would like to be sick but there is no energy in him to do it. The bile sticks in his throat, and catches light there.

‘I wish you hadn’t saved me,’ he says, because there is no one here to listen. Because there is no one here to see. And he would say he wished Valjean had never touched him at all, but that would be a lie and this is no time to break the honesty of a lifetime. He reaches into his pocket as the throb in his head ramps up, primed to burst, a deep-red ache with the promise of blood behind it. _I wish I never knew you_ , he thinks, and it is not a lie, not a bit; if he never knew Valjean, he would never know goodness and would never know pain, and ignorance would be the bliss he never knew he sought.

He bends and touches the words. He blinks too slowly, too aware of the faint slime on the rain-damp stone, as though all his consciousness is falling to lie under the tips of his fingers. If he died here, there would be symmetry to it. He could be satisfied at the last. But God is not merciful, and he is left to endure; to live with everything he was stupid enough to allow.

 A pencil drops from his fingers as he turns away. The sky drops water on the word he leaves behind, the only place it belongs, his heart offered up to Jean Valjean – a man who never asked for it, and never wanted it, and who Javert wants to hate for letting him give it anyway.

‘You were a thief to the last,’ he says to the air - but there is no one to hear, and this time, he is glad.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **ETA:** I almost forgot! The concept of words on a wall is shamelessly stolen from a HP fic I read about ten years ago, and would give a lot to be able to find again. But that's the only thing I nicked, promise.


End file.
